


The Fire and the Flood

by Mertiya



Category: Thunderbolt Fantasy 東離劍遊紀 (TV)
Genre: Angst and Tragedy, Canon Compliant, Choking, Coming Untouched, Lin is a trash boy, M/M, Poor Phoenix, Why aren't you afraid of me, no happy ending, when is he not
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-12
Updated: 2019-01-12
Packaged: 2019-10-08 16:42:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,337
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17389961
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mertiya/pseuds/Mertiya
Summary: A collection of recollections.  What is love, anyway?





	The Fire and the Flood

**Author's Note:**

> This one is most definitely for FrostandSilence.

                  When Setsu Mu Shō strides into the main hall of Seven Sins Tower, two things stand out to him. The first is Betsu Ten Gai, beautiful and terrible, the light on his sword shining brighter than anything else in the room. The second—the second is Lin Setsu A, standing to the side, eyes bright, figure still somehow muted to Setsu’s senses. He’s seen that face look indescribably soft, and it has never stopped hurting that it was nothing more than a pretense. It never will, until one of them dies. No, Setsu thinks. It never will until _he_ dies.

                  He strides forward.

~

                  The way Lin is looking at him makes no sense, unabashedly staring across the tent as Setsu carefully disrobes. “What?” he demands. That assessing gaze boring into him almost makes him want to hide himself.

                  “You’re quite beautiful,” the Enigmatic Gale responds lightly.

                  Setsu blinks at him in surprise. “I—what?”

                  Lin takes a long drag on his pipe. “You are possessed of an exceptional strength and grace. I have watched you fight; your motions are precise but not so efficient as to avoid being aesthetically pleasing.” He shrugs. “I enjoy watching you,” he admits.

                  There is no fear in his gaze.

~

                  The stars are distant and cold. An owl is hooting somewhere in the distance. Setsu stares up at the moon and sips at his sake.

                  “Morose as ever, I see.” Lin breathes white smoke down across his shoulder.

                  “You don’t find my sordid upbringing reason enough for melancholy?” Setsu asks him coolly. Even hours later, he still wonders what possessed him to confess it at all.

                  “Ah, well, as to that…” Lin drapes himself across Setsu. “It seems to me simply a matter of leaving your past behind.”

                  Setsu raises an eyebrow at him. “You’ve a very peculiar man, Lin Setsu A.”

                  “I have been called much worse.” Lin takes a long, deep drag on his pipe, blowing out a white cloud of smoke, and his gaze locks with Setsu’s.

                  “I haven’t met a man in years who hasn’t feared to look me in the eye,” Setsu tells him bluntly. “Is that peculiar enough?”

                  “I have never had much use for fear,” Lin admits, settling himself against Setsu’s chest. A little smile hovers about the corners of his mouth. “Well. Not my own, at any rate.” He runs a slim finger down Setsu’s chest, and Setsu doesn’t know what he’s thinking, but this is something he needs to test. His sword is at Lin’s throat in an instant. The Enigmatic Gale doesn’t even look surprised. As Setsu stares, he puts out his tongue and draws it delicately along the flat of the blade. “I admit, I won’t be deep-throating this one,” he smirks, and Setsu feels his cheeks warm at the suggestiveness.

                  “What are you saying?” he asks. The moonlight falling through Lin’s white hair turns it silver, like fine, shimmering wire, an almost preternatural beauty.

                  “I am saying that I don’t fear you, of course.” Lin smiles brilliantly. “What you choose to do with that information is up to you.”

                  Setsu stares at him, his sword edge wavering. “You should,” he says eventually. “I could make you.”

                  “ _Really_.” Lin’s voice has dropped a full octave, those fine white eyelashes dropping down to hood his eyes, and that reaction, the gleam of a hidden sharp edge in his smile—it isn’t right. Setsu doesn’t know how to handle it, and somehow his hand is reaching out on its own, tangling roughly in that fine silky hair, and dragging Lin towards him. He sheathes his sword as he pulls the Enigmatic Gale against him. “O-ho,” murmurs Lin, and Setsu is baffled again as the Enigmatic Gale runs a delicate finger across his lips.

                  In a confused attempt to take control of the situation again, he grabs Lin’s throat, twisting him around so that his back is pressed right against Setsu, the heat of him lithe and soft against Setsu’s chest, against his—

                  And it’s Setsu who’s afraid. A curious thing, this fear: it rises like a flame in his chest, and he knows there is no way he will ever be able to snuff it out. When he tightens his hand on Lin’s throat, tight enough he can feel the hot blood pounding against it, the response is a pleased little moan, and how is Setsu supposed to respond to that?

                  Whether or not he is supposed to, how he does respond is to bite the back of Lin’s neck, and Lin moans, pressing his hips back, rubbing against Setsu in blatant invitation. For a moment the Eradicator of Life considers how to proceed, that strange hot-cold fear rising him in again, but he knows he cannot back down, not now that he is holding a storm in his arms. And even if he is afraid, he will not show it.

                  He does not show it. He strips Lin quickly and efficiently from the waist down and does the same to himself, then pauses as he considers how to proceed. Lin chuckles and dangles a little bottle in front of his nose. “Is this what you need?”

                  Setsu growls and snatches it from him, slathers what he hopes is enough over his erection while biting back a groan, and then pulls Lin back onto it, hard.

                  Lin hisses, but he takes it, uncomplainingly, and Setsu is able to hilt himself in the Enigmatic Gale without trouble, unless you count the way he shudders and his nails dig into Lin’s hips. He doesn’t. He won’t. He—his thoughts swirl about, settling only on that exquisite heat at his front, the tightness of Lin around him. One hand moves up onto Lin’s throat again, the other holding Lin roughly so he can slide out of him and back in, drawing a gasp from both their throats.

                  He’s not so ethereal now, Setsu thinks, a little wildly, with his hand pressing down on the flow of Lin’s air into his lungs, not so ethereal with the little mewling gasps he lets out as Setsu drives into him, with his head falling back, his eyes glazing over, and a little trickle of drool escaping the corner of his mouth. But—he’s definitely not afraid. Not even when Setsu presses hard enough to cut off his access to air entirely. He just watches Setsu from beneath those damn hooded eyes and fucks himself back onto Setsu’s cock, and when Setsu lets him take a deep, rasping breath, he expels it in a ragged moan, twitching around Setsu’s erection, and when he looks down, he realizes that Lin is coming, although Setsu hasn’t touched his cock, striping white across his own chest and belly.

                  Setsu stares at him, moaning and undone in his arms, and as he thrusts into him one more time feels his own climax overtaking him, and the orgasm is so intense it almost hurts.

~

                  It doesn’t hurt, the knife edge of Betsu Ten Gai’s blade, though it feels cold in his chest. It slid in as easily as any sword that Setsu has ever wielded, and he welcomes the clarity that comes with it. It is not repentance he feels; it is only weariness and the sight of an end to that weariness ahead of him. His steps are light as he crosses the room to Lin, whose face is as composed as ever. It is only when his knees stop carrying him that he realizes there is pain, actually, but a numb, distant sort of pain.

                  Lin’s face does not change, but his arms tremble around Setsu, and his fingers play desperately at the edge of the wound in the Phoenix Killer’s back, a man trying to stitch something back together before it is broken irreparably. Lin’s face does not change, but for an instant there is tenderness in the touch of those hands.

                  And, Setsu thinks, as he slips away into darkness, that perhaps he never really would have killed the Enigmatic Gale.


End file.
